Program Description...
Nurturing America’s Military Families is a Parenting Program specifically designed to improve the nurturing parenting skills of parents in the military with children ages birth to 5 years old. The NPSP model of the Military Families Nurturing Program is culturally adapted to address the uniqueness of parenting when one or both parents is on active duty. The NPSP is referred to as a competency-based program.
Depending on the age of the child, appropriate activities are implemented in a pre-school type setting. Home visits engage parents in learning Nurturing Parenting skills and building positive parent-child attachments.
Program Consists of...
Lessons are presented in the 5 parenting constructs that represent the subscales of the
Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory (AAPI-2):
• Empathy;
• Developmental Expectations;
• Alternatives to Corporal Punishment;
• Reversing Family Roles; and
• Oppressing Children’s Power and Independence
Parents complete the AAPI-2 and the Nurturing Skills Competency Scale (NSCS) to measure changes in knowledge, beliefs, and behavior. Based on the pretest data, parents and parent educators create a Family Nurturing Plan (FNP) that tailors the lesson to meet the specific parenting needs of the families. The parent educators use the Family Nurturing Plan (FNP) to measure the progress parents are making. Parents use the Family Nurturing Journal (FNJ) to monitor their progress in learning the program competencies.
The Home Visitor’s Instructional Manual contains 55 individual lessons in parenting, and 7 lessons in family life in the military. Each lesson can be taught in a home based setting. Each of the 62 available home visits has identified competencies that the parents need to learn in order for their parenting practices to improve. Weekly Home Practice Assignments help parents develop the nurturing parenting competencies.
